Your responses to the 2020 Census are safe, secure, and protected by federal law. Your answers can only be used to produce statistics—they cannot be used against you in any way. By law, all responses to U.S. Census Bureau household and business surveys are kept completely confidential.

The U.S. Census Bureau is bound by Title 13 of the United States Code. This laws not only provides authority for the work we do, but also provides strong protection for the information we collect from individuals and businesses. As a result, the Census Bureau has one of the strongest confidentiality guarantees in the federal government.

It is against the law for any Census Bureau employee to disclose or publish any census or survey information that identifies an individual or business. This is true even for inter-agency communication: the FBI and other government entities do not have the legal right to access this information. In fact, when these protections have been challenged, Title 13's confidentiality guarantee has been upheld.

The online questionnaire is accessible, following the latest web accessibility guidelines. There will also be a video in American Sign Language available to guide you through responding online.

You can respond by phone in English or in 12 additional languages. You can also respond in English by TDD at 844-467-2020.

By mid-April, we’ll mail a paper questionnaire to every household that hasn’t already responded. (Some households will receive a paper questionnaire along with the first invitation in March.)

Braille and large print guides will be available online to assist you with completing the paper questionnaire.

If necessary, you can respond in person beginning in mid-May. Census takers will visit all households that have not yet responded and census takers will be available who can communicate in American Sign Language.

When the census taker visits to help you respond, you can request that another census taker who communicates in American Sign Language returns, if you prefer.

Households will be able to respond to the 2020 Census online, over the phone, or through a paper questionnaire. Click here for a sample of the paper questionnaire that will be used during the 2020 Census. This version excludes some features that will be made available to households starting in March 2020, such as the URL for online response and the contact information for phone response.

As part of the GQ operation, the Census Bureau has developed special enumeration procedures to count people experiencing homelessness at service locations and pre-identified outdoor locations. The SBE operation is specifically designed to approach people using service facilities because the homeless may be missed during the traditional enumeration of housing units and GQs. These service locations and outdoor locations include the following:

Shelters (SH)

Soup Kitchens (SK)

Regularly Scheduled Mobile Food Vans (RSMFV)

Targeted Non-Sheltered Outdoor Locations (TNSOL)

For the 2020 Census, the Service-Based Enumeration operation will be conducted in March 2020. Service providers for SH, SK, and RSMFV will be given the flexibility for their facility to be enumerated on any one of these three days March 30, March 31, or April 1, during the enumeration period. TNSOLs will be enumerated April 1, 2020. The results from the SBE operation do not provide a count of the population experiencing homelessness or a count of the population who use those services at any geographic level. More information is available here.

Strict federal law protects your census responses. It is against the law for any Census Bureau employee to disclose or publish any census information that identifies an individual. Census Bureau employees take a lifelong pledge of confidentiality to handle data responsibly and keep respondents’ information private. The penalty for wrongful disclosure is a fine of up to $250,000 or imprisonment for up to 5 years, or both.

No law enforcement agency (not the DHS, ICE, FBI, or CIA) can access or use your personal information at any time. Data collected can only be used for statistical purposes that help inform important decisions, including how much federal funding your community receives.